Church of the Isaiah 58 Project

The Church of the Isaiah 58 Project is a seasonal meal program in Quartzsite, Arizona, that serves people whose lives have been unsettled by poverty, medical debt, or life on the road. Founded by Mike Hobby and his wife after they experienced homelessness themselves, the church turns that history into practical aid: from November through March, it serves thousands of meals to elderly and homeless people, without making a sermon a condition of receiving food.

Founding and Mission

Mike Hobby, a former biker who became a pastor, and his wife founded the church in 2003 after a medical crisis left them uninsured and buried in bills they could not pay. Their experience of homelessness shaped the project’s mission to help people who are dispossessed. As the program grew, its seasonal meal service became a substantial source of support for older and homeless visitors to Quartzsite.

The church’s approach differs from missions that require guests to sit through a sermon before eating. At the Isaiah 58 Project, there is no such requirement. The distinction is practical as well as religious: meals are made available without asking diners to first submit to a service or demonstrate their beliefs.

The Seasonal Dining Room

On a night described in the book, diners queued with plastic trays for spaghetti topped with chicken cacciatore, salad, garlic bread served on hamburger buns, and apple crisp. They ate at long tables in a warehouse space behind the church, which opened onto the parking lot. The meal drew together retirees, freight-train travelers, and bicycle tramps, making the dining room a meeting place for people with different routes into insecurity and different ways of living on the move.

The room also carried an unmistakable religious message. A hand-painted banner showed a stick figure approaching a doorway, with flames on one side and a golden cloud on the other, and urged viewers to choose Jesus. Yet the meal program did not require guests to hear a sermon before being served. The scene holds those features together: an explicitly Christian setting, a visible appeal to faith, and food offered without a religious attendance test.

The People the Church Serves

Mike Hobby described older transients as coming to Quartzsite because it is a low-income retirement town and an inexpensive place to stay out of sight. The desert offered relief from cold and, for some, a way to tell family members that they were managing. The church’s seasonal service thus addressed more than hunger: it met people in a place where retirement insecurity and homelessness could be concealed behind the appearance of choosing a warmer, cheaper destination.

One dinner brought the narrator into conversation with Leonard Scott, known as Scottie, a sixty-three-year-old former gas station owner. After the economy collapsed, he lost two homes and a duplex he had acquired as investment properties. He lived in a 1995 Winnebago and supplemented his monthly $590 Social Security check by working at a hot spring in Tonopah, Arizona. He hoped to join friends in the Pacific Northwest to pick morel mushrooms, which he had heard could sell for $10 an ounce, and eventually imagined moving to Kauai to live on fruit. His plans show both the resourcefulness of the visitors the church served and the thin financial margins behind their mobility.

The church stood near Quartzsite’s town food pantry, another point of support for people with limited resources. The two services formed part of a broader local landscape of assistance, while the church’s warehouse dining room offered something distinct: a shared table where people facing hardship could eat alongside one another without an admission requirement tied to worship.